Yes, I’m Going to Write Myself Well by Edgar Ballantyne

A playful collection of short poems combining deep thought with intense sensory richness

Starting from the back of the volume, like we would do perusing at the bookstore, we read in the author’s note of Yes, I’m going to write myself well that Edgar Ballantyne likes poetry “because it’s the shape that thoughts come in anyway.” That is sadly untrue for most of the rest of us, but this collection testifies to Ballantyne’s seemingly effortless ability to generate pleasant poetic writing.

Ballantyne largely deals with great things, like what it is to be alive, and human, and to love, but in sensorily particular ways, like musing on the magic of sunshine touching the skin or imagining the life of a bird or bug. These may sound like clichés but their treatment here is admirably original, usually inverting conventions. See, for example, this smart examination of a trite phrase:

“Time is money 

But spare time is not spare money 

Would have stayed stunted and shade

Is what would have happened 

To hold that line”

This is Ballantyne performing the poet’s duty, which is the defense of language, while also delivering a not negligible piece of truth. Elsewhere, the delivery is more aphoristic, as when it is pronounced that to trust is “waiting in the snow for the sun to hold out a hand.”

Truth constantly arises from the resilience of Ballantyne’s language, waging battle against triteness. There is also a lot of playing with word order which, not always being immediately clear, keeps the reader on their toes. And, necessarily, the poet plays around with rhythm as well, mostly in straightforward and effective ways. Although tricks, either deliberate or not, are still present. For instance, the simple repetition of a word in the short eighth poem of the collection vividly recalls the rhythms and repetitions employed in the Kalevala, the national epic of Finland.

Aided by the beautiful photography of normal skies that greets the reader on whole pages after each poem, this collection exudes and produces a calmness, something which is especially valuable in our turbulent days full of “swollen clouds of resentment.” The poems are characterized by naturalness, as well as humility, and more than a little humor, all quietly contributing to the “incandescent rumbling of the truth.”

Calmness, however, is not to be taken for serenity, as the restlessness running through these poems proves. “If you seek your self,” we are asked, “then who is it seeking?” and the more barren note of loneliness also joins the chorus. It is a book with hardly well-definable subject matter, but we feel persuaded that it is a revered one in any case.

Only things that are named can thrive and carry on, or so says one of the most poignant poems in the collection before it goes on to smartly invert the phrase’s meaning. That is only fitting since the eighty-two miniatures that make up this volume are identified only by their number, although that makes one wonder two things: why couldn’t there be an index of first lines, and what is the significance of the number that made the author resist the appeal of a round eighty?

Reading phrases like tears being “distillates of desire,” one quickly understands that Ballantyne’s work is the product of real sensibility, and those who appreciate beauty will find plenty to appreciate here.